The present invention relates to a disc drive microactuation system, and more particularly to a gimbal flexure for mechanically supporting and electrically connecting a microactuator for achieving high resolution positioning of a transducing head supported by a slider in a disc drive system.
The density of concentric data tracks on magnetic discs continues to increase (that is, the radial spacing between data tracks is decreasing), requiring more precise radial positioning of the head. Conventionally, head positioning is accomplished by operating an actuator arm with a large-scale actuation motor, such as a voice coil motor, to radially position a head on a flexure at the end of the actuator arm. The large-scale motor lacks sufficient resolution to effectively accommodate high track-density discs. Thus, a high resolution head positioning mechanism, or microactuator, is necessary to accommodate the more densely spaced tracks.
Various microactuator locations and designs have been considered to achieve high resolution head positioning. One promising design involves inserting a silicon-based thin film structure between the suspension and the slider in a disc drive assembly. The microactuator includes, for example, an electromagnetic transducer having magnetic core materials forming a stator and a rotor, with conductive coils wrapped around the stator core in a solenoid-type or planar-type configuration. One of the technical challenges in implementing such a microactuator is to provide sufficiently large actuation force to overcome friction forces and spring bias forces to accelerate the head enough to acconmmodate the required bandwidth. Such a design must be realized in a relatively small wafer area, to keep costs reasonable and to allow easy integration into the disc drive design. It would also be useful for the microactuator to include a position sensor to discern the relative position of the movable portion of the microactuator.
A microactuator design achieving superior actuation force in a small wafer area is disclosed in U.S. application Ser. No. 09/010,100 filed Jan. 21, 1998 entitled "Magnetic Microactuator and Inductive Position Sensor Having Shaped Pole Configuration" by L. Zhang, P. Ryan and P. Crane, which is hereby incorporated by reference. A microactuator suspension for interfacing the improved microactuator motor with the mechanical requirements of a disc drive is disclosed in U.S. application Ser. No. 09/071,611 filed May 1, 1998 entitled "Electromagnetic Disc Drive Microactuator and Suspension" by L. Zhang, P. Crane and R. Resh, which is hereby incorporated by reference. There is a continuing need in the art for a gimbal flexure design to interface the improved microactuator and suspension with other disc drive components to achieve precise, high performance head positioning.